Apple has unveiled its latest model of iPhone, the iPhone 7, and it carries with it a host of nifty new features you’d come to expect from the tech giant’s landmark product. However, one new feature seems to stand out more than the others when it comes to public attention and scrutiny; the traditional 3.5 mm headphone jack, long a staple for phones and similar audio devices, has been removed.

Many users are outraged at the removal of such a deemed essential feature and are confused about Apple’s motivation in the first place—but let’s not forget Apple’s history of radical design ideas that seemed inaccessible or impractical. In fact, the original iPhone, while not the first device to feature a touch-based keyboard, was one of the first devices to popularize the feature, which took some getting used to for users accustomed to traditional keyboards.

The reality is, for innovation to move forward, users have to be put in a position of discomfort sooner or later. Why is that?

Doing What No One Else Is Doing

As any marketer will tell you, one of the most important factors for a brand’s success is differentiation. If you’re only doing what other people are doing, mimicking their designs and following their approaches more or less precisely, you’ll never be able to stand out. This is why, as explained by Neil Patel, you first need to have a specific target niche.

The differentiation of removing the headphone jack may seem like a detraction—it makes the iPhone stand out as unfavorable compared to other options—but at the same time, Apple retains its reputation as a forward-thinking leader. The Apple-faithful will accept the change, probably get used to it, and eventually jack-less devices may become the “new normal.”

In this way, it’s almost necessary for innovators to opt for new features that make users uncomfortable—and it makes designers uncomfortable too. According to the Harvard Business Review, behind almost any great innovation is a tremendous amount of pain and stress.

Opting for 100 Percent Transitions

There’s also a crucial decision point when it comes to introducing certain kinds of innovations. Some innovations can happen in gradual increments—such as how more and more information can be held on smaller and smaller digital forms of storage.

But for some innovations, a full transition is both smoother and (occasionally) necessary, almost like a bandage being removed quickly to avoid prolonged pain. This is a way to optimize discomfort rather than avoid it, giving users significant discomfort up front rather than gradually introducing discomfort over a longer period of time. You can’t half-remove a headphone jack, so Apple prepared to make the full transition with its latest model.

Another good example of this happening recently is Google’s self-driving car project. Many auto manufacturers have attempted to “warm users up” to the idea of self-driving cars with individual features and technologies that assist drivers, such as parallel parking assistance or integrated GPS units.

Google, on the other hand, has opted to develop fully self-contained, self-driving cars from the start. This enables them to envision the final product first; and rather than wasting time on a series of Frankenstein-like hybrid models, they can jump forward to a more complete final product.

The Timing Problem

For companies looking to turn a profit with a new invention, there’s also a timing problem to face; sometimes, users only realize they need something when they’ve been exposed to it in some form already.

For example, the iPhone wasn’t the first smartphone on the market; there were dozens of models before it, but none of them skyrocketed to popularity the way the iPhone did, because they were all, in some ways, incomplete. Afterward, dozens of competitors tried to match the iPhone’s success, but could never overcome the iPhone’s early introduction. Great companies and great innovators are unafraid to offer “complete” packages early.

You may remain divided or angry about the missing headphone jack in Apple’s new iPhone, but it’s quite possibly a necessary step forward for phone technology. All great innovations are uncomfortable at first, until you realize retrospectively they’re exactly what you needed all along.

Don’t expect this to be the last time that Apple—or any tech company—announces a new feature that takes people by surprise.

Friday, Mar 14, 2014

Friday, May 16, 2014

ARTICLE: One day, a woman named Lisa is walking her dog, Lucky, when she meets an elderly neighbor. Suddenly, the neighbor falls unconscious and stops breathing. What would you do in this scenario? These days, many people’s initial reaction would be to reach for their mobile phones and seek help. But today’s search engines don’t offer pertinent assistance for such a situation. You can go to Wikipedia or the Mayo Clinic site, but those resources are designed for relaxed information seeking, not for urgent settings such as the one above.

Thursday, Jul 10, 2014

Tuesday, Jul 22, 2014

ARTICLE: Conventional wisdom holds that the use of GPS satellites to enable indoor mapping is a non-starter. GPS receivers, it is said, simply don’t work indoors, for a variety of reasons. While Earth’s outdoors environment has been mapped extensively, indoor localization of places such as shopping malls or department stores remains an elusive dream.

Friday, Jul 18, 2014

ARTICLE: As the smartphone and tablet markets saturate and mature, device vendors and consumers are looking toward new smart connected devices that will expand the frontiers of usefulness and entertainment value, while driving growth for device vendors, software developers, software vendors and other adjacent market sectors. While “wearables,” portable devices that often interface with users’ smartphones, have attracted the greatest attention, TBR believes the larger potential market is in fixed devices in the home. The leader in this category is the Nest thermostat, offered by the Nest Labs, now a subsidiary of Google. We think the consumer IoT will complement and often lead the commercial IoT, and together, they will fuel a wave of innovation and expansion in all segments of IT.

Tuesday, Jul 29, 2014

ARTICLE: Salesforce.com relies on ISV Platform partners to develop and sell industry-specific applications Salesforce1 is the driving force behind the company’s industry applications play. Salesforce.com is taking a similar approach as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft by leaving partners white spaces to build, sell and service industry-specific applications. While Salesforce and its platform competitors have the technical expertise and agility to build industry-specific applications in-house, building and supporting these applications increases R&D and sales and marketing costs — costs that Salesforce.com, in TBR’s opinion, is trying to reduce. Instead, leveraging partners to drive the majority of industry growth and ensure simple integration enables Salesforce.com to enter the industry applications market while improving profitability and leaving the risk to partners.

Tuesday, Aug 19, 2014

Wednesday, Aug 27, 2014

PODCAST: Futurist Brian David Johnson expands on his Science Fiction Prototyping column, speaking with Julie Hubschman about how she spent the summer with Jimmy the Robot, a walking, talking, tweeting science fiction prototype.

Thursday, Oct 16, 2014

ARTICLE: With LTE now deployed pervasively across North America and gaining momentum in Latin America, industry focus is shifting toward how to densify these networks to handle the exponential increase in data traffic and how to monetize this powerful new network infrastructure. The private 2014 4G Americas Analyst Forum focused on these topics and others, and provided a unique view into how operators and vendors plan to address the major challenges the industry faces. Several of the sessions covered included how to better leverage Wi-Fi and cellular together, what 5G will look like, and what obstacles are slowing the take-off of the M2M market.

Monday, Nov 3, 2014

Thursday, Nov 20, 2014

ARTICLE: David Alan Grier provides an audio recording of his Errant Hashtag column, in which he discusses how amateur software developers might lack precise technical skills but bring detailed knowledge of their environments to the table.

Monday, Feb 9, 2015

Monday, Feb 16, 2015

ARTICLE: Incumbent telecom operators in the U.S. face a new category of competitors that play by a different set of rules. These alternative network providers aim to disrupt the traditional telecom business model by lowering access costs and improving the user experience. Their motivations differ from incumbent telcos, which focus on monetizing their connectivity solutions. Rather, these alternative network providers view access as a sunk cost necessary to drive their other initiatives, such as digital advertising and e-commerce. The stakes are high because these market dynamics will shift the balance of power, money, and landscape makeup in coming years. Only the strongest and most nimble incumbent operators will survive the coming shakeout.

Thursday, Mar 19, 2015

Monday, Mar 23, 2015

ARTICLE: Healthcare, one of the largest and most vital sectors of the US economy, dragged its feet when other industries embraced information technologies and still creates many of its records by hand. But that may be finally changing. Bolstered by funding from the economic stimulus package, the industry is gearing up to computerize patients’ medical records and create a nationwide infrastructure to facilitate the transmission and exchange of records among patients, doctors, hospitals, pharmacies, and others.

Thursday, Mar 26, 2015

VIDEO: Pervasive computing thrives at the intersection of many areas of computer science, including distributed systems, human-computer interaction, and artifical intelligence, says Maria R. Ebling, IEEE Pervasive Computing Editor in Chief. Ebling, a research staff member at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, spoke about P=Pervasive as part of IBM's A-Z Video Series.

Friday, Apr 3, 2015

ARTICLE: Demand for new electronic applications is driving opportunities for transparent conductors—and the need for a cost-effective material that conforms to bends and curves, is flexible, and foldable.

Tuesday, May 12, 2015

ARTICLE: Wearable technology has attracted a ton of buzz in the past few years, with special attention over the past few months as Apple readies the official release of the Apple Watch. Consumers, digital marketers, and businesses have all been resetting their expectations and looking to wearable devices as the future of technology, but in reality, these types of devices may only be a short-term fad.

Monday, Jun 22, 2015

Thursday, Jul 16, 2015

ARTICLE: While there seems to be a constant stream of technical breakthroughs in computing systems, particularly in processors, memory and faster interfaces, revolutionary changes are also occurring in display and touch technology.

Thursday, Sep 15, 2016

ARTICLE: As ecommerce continues to become an even larger part of the global marketplace, we’re beginning to see some new developments take shape. These trends are making ecommerce more cost-effective, efficient, and profitable for both businesses and their consumers.

Tuesday, Sep 20, 2016

ARTICLE: Kansas City: home to Jazz, the Royals (2015 World Series Champions) and BBQ. For the past few years, it's also been the envy of the tech world with first access to Google Fiber..... eliminating all perception as just "flyover country". Having initial dibs on this gigabit speed internet not only helped elevate KC as a top tech hub, it brought jobs, startups and created a buzz that can't be quantified. This journey all started with a challenge from Google: "What would you do with internet 100x faster?"

Thursday, Sep 22, 2016

ARTICLE: Apple has unveiled its latest model of iPhone, the iPhone 7, and it carries with it a host of nifty new features you’d come to expect from the tech giant’s landmark product. However, one new feature seems to stand out more than the others when it comes to public attention and scrutiny; the traditional 3.5 mm headphone jack, long a staple for phones and similar audio devices, has been removed.

Tuesday, Nov 15, 2016

ARTICLE: Any portable or hand-held device will be dropped. Humans do that. Because LCD displays are made of thin glass and glass can break, we face some design challenges. While making your display unbreakable isn't possible, optimizing drop-test performance with a system level approach will help products pass drop-testing and make your end product far more durable.

Friday, Dec 9, 2016

ARTICLE: Hackers are rampant on the internet and it's not unusual for people to get have their websites destroyed because of an attack. While these cyber attacks are actually quite common, there are many ways to be able to protect oneself from hackers that roam around the internet. In order to protect your information from these hackers, you can make use of these tips to beef up your security of your website or your personal accounts.

Monday, Mar 6, 2017

ARTICLE: Over $69 billion was generated in global mobile app revenue in the year 2015 alone. Some estimates purport that by the year 2020 that number will nearly triple. It would be an understatement to suggest that the (already massive) mobile app market is growing exponentially. Advancements in both hardware and software have greatly decreased the cost of powerful smartphones, which has, in turn, caused them to proliferate rather rapidly. As more people use smartphones on an everyday basis, the demand for apps rises.

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IEEE Annals of the History of Computing covers computer history with scholarly articles by leading computer scientists and historians, as well as first-hand accounts.

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